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Sarkozy Defeated In Primary For French Right's Presidential Candidate Former prime ministers François Fillon and Alain Juppé face second vote on 27 November, after Nicolas Sarkozy suffers humiliating rejection Angelique Chrisafis in Paris 20 November 2016 Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s political career has been effectively ended, after he was dealt a humiliating defeat on Sunday by his former prime minister François Fillon in the first round of the race to choose the rightwing Republican party’s candidate for the presidency next spring. Fillon, a socially conservative, free-market reformer who admires Margaret Thatcher and voted against same-sex marriage, came close to...

The European Union must stop being nit-picky and intrusive, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on Sunday as the bloc scrambled to handle the aftermath of Britain's vote to leave. The Brexit vote to leave the EU has deepened fears among mainstream politicians across Europe about the rise of eurosceptic, anti-establishment parties, particularly in France, where the far-right National Front is increasingly popular. That concern has also prompted mainstream French politicians on the left and right to call for an overhaul of Europe, in a country where surveys show disillusionment with Brussels is growing. "We must put an end to...

The US President is weak, the Spanish leader is dim, the German Chancellor is clinging on to France’s coat-tails and the head of the European Commission is irrelevant. That, at any rate, is the world according to President Sarkozy, who has spent the week airing his unvarnished opinions of Barack Obama and an array of international politicians — abruptly ending France’s honeymoon with the US and needling Washington on several strategic issues. In the latest in a stream of accounts from the Élysée Palace, Mr Sarkozy was quoted yesterday as telling an all-party group of MPs that Mr Obama was...

France's far-right National Front (FN) appears to have made big gains in the first round of regional elections, estimates show. They put the FN ahead in at least six of 13 regions in mainland France. The elections are the first electoral test since last month's Paris attacks, in which 130 people were killed. The centre-right Republicans party led by former President Nicolas Sarkozy appeared to be in second place ahead of the governing Socialist Party.

Nicolas Sarkozy vows to 'electronically tag' all 11,500 people France's extremist watch list: Former president promises tough line if returned to the Elysée Former President Nicolas Sarkozy met with Francois Hollande earlier He said he would 'expel forcibly' all extremist Imams preaching hatred Sarkozy also vowed to jail any Jihadis who return to France from Syria He also said he would deport any violent extremists with dual nationality By Darren Boyle for MailOnline Published: 23:17 GMT, 15 November 2015 | Updated: 02:20 GMT, 16 November 2015 Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has vowed to electronically tag all 11,500 people on...

On Nov. 8, 2011, President Obama met with then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Cannes after what had been a particularly rough week for US-Israeli relations. Modal Trigger The week prior, the UN agency UNESCO admitted Palestine as a member state. Congress responded by cutting off UNESCO’s funding, a move the Obama administration direly opposed. Michael Oren, who served as Israel’s US ambassador from 2009 to 2013, said the president, having opposed Palestine’s admission to the agency, “thought he had done enough . . . and did not need to punish them further.” President Obama responded to Congress’ act by admonishing Israel for...

One tactic Soviet-bloc countries would use to stifle dissidents was involuntary confinement to mental institutions. After all, you have to be crazy to oppose state ideology, right? Now, though, 26 years after the Berlin Wall’s fall comes a similar shocking story — from well west of where the wall stood. It is alleged that a French mayor has been involuntarily confined to a mental asylum for “Islamophobia.” The story involves Robert Chardon, mayor of the southern French town of Venelles; the problems began when, participating in a public Twitter discussion initiated by former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, the mayor proposed...

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has changed his party's name from Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) to The Republicans. Members of France's main opposition party voted to support the rebranding on Friday, with 83% of members approving the move. The move has sparked widespread debate in France, with critics arguing that all French people are Republicans......

Robert Chardon, mayor of the French town of Venelles, has allegedly been forced into a mental institution for tweeting, “We must ban the Muslim faith in France.” This revelation came to us via the Agence France-Presse, a highly regarded news entity that claimed Chardon was involuntarily hospitalized last Friday. Chardon also tweeted that France should revoke a centuries-old secularism law and instead “promote the practice of the Christian faith.” All this rhetoric reportedly angered Nicolas Sarkozy, leader of the Union for a Popular Movement, the same party to which Chardon belongs. “I condemn this proposal even if secularism also means...

It may be intellectually comforting to suggest the UMP-UDI could "make the National Front useless", or less prosaically, to propose implementing those measures for which the French vote for the Front and, in so doing, 'siphoning out' the Front's programme. Sarkozy employed this strategy during the last presidential campaign -- but it did not work. Sarkozy has been smart enough to understand that any kind of alliance with the Front would mean the end of the UMP. But he also knows what a significant chunk of supporters wants. Reconciling everybody won't be easy, as the organisation of the party has...

Ex-French PM accuses Hollande aide of lying over Sarkozy legal case claims PARIS Sun Nov 9, 2014 4:36pm EST (Reuters) - Former French prime minister Francois Fillon accused President Francois Hollande's chief of staff of lying on Sunday after a media report accused Fillon of asking him to accelerate a legal case against his rival Nicolas Sarkozy. Newspaper Le Monde said that Fillon had asked Jean-Pierre Jouyet in June to speed up legal cases involving Sarkozy to undermine his political comeback, including one linked to fines over the funding of the former president's 2012 campaign.

As political encores go, former President Nicolas Sarkozy didn’t quite get the warm embrace from his party that many French had expected in his return to public life on Saturday. The hard-charging Gaullist who once made headlines for reviving France’s U.S. ties, helping depose Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and marrying a former supermodel while in office won a race for leader of France’s main conservative party—but with a margin of victory that was smaller than many had predicted. Sarkozy’s victory as chief of the Union for a Popular Movement, or UMP, was a crucial first step on his road to...

Israel and not America was behind the hacking of millions of French phones, it was claimed today. [Snip] But today’s Le Monde newspaper provides evidence that it was in fact Israeli agents who were listening in. France first suspected the U.S. of hacking into former president Nicolas Sarkozy’s communications network when he was unsuccessfully trying for re-election in 2012. Intelligence officials Bernard Barbier and Patrick Pailloux travelled from Paris to Washington to demand an explanation, but the Americans hinted that the Israelis were to blame. The Americans insisted they have never been behind any hacking in France, and were always

Francois Hollande 'shared' his mistress Valerie Trierweiler with Sarkozy minister Francois Hollande "shared" his mistress Valerie Trierweiler with a minister from Nicolas Sarkozy's government in a Jules et Jim-style relationship, a new biography on France's first lady claims. La Frondeuse (The Troublemaker), claims that Miss Trierweiler, 47, had an affair with Patrick Devedjian, 68, a former economic recovery minister, in the early 2000s, but that the Socialist Mr Hollande, 58, muscled in when the Right-winger failed to commit himself further to the relationship. There followed a period "a bit like Jules et Jim," said the co-author Christophe Jakubyszyn, a close...

For those who think the president's animosity toward Israel isn't expressed both personally and through policy, I've taken the liberty of "reprinting" a column from November 2011 as a reminder. Oh, and this notice has been added to give SOME readers, who shall not be named, something else to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. It's a good article. No, no, no: You're welcome. It's my pleasure to add this notice. I know it will make the article MUCH better. Really. Happy Thanksgiving. Well, I’ll say one thing for him: Obama certainly has been transformative when it comes putting the “personal”...

France’s Muslim community is mobilizing voters to reject President Nicolas Sarkozy in Sunday’s election to punish the conservative leader for his anti-immigrant and anti-Islam rhetoric. “[French] Muslims can’t stand it anymore. They are fed up with these debates about national identity, halal meat, the veil or fundamentalism all over the place,” said Francoise Lorcerie, a sociologist with the Institute of Studies on the Arab and Muslim World near Marseille.

THE unfolding story of how Barclays — and, in all likelihood, other big banks — rigged interest rates is full of telling tidbits about the way Wall Street works. It also represents yet another teachable moment. By now the world knows that Barclays manipulated the most widely used benchmark rate, the London interbank offered rate. But Barclays is just one member of the cozy club that sets the Libor, which is supposed to be based on the average rate at which large banks can borrow money overnight. It’s not based on actual transactions, however — and that leaves room for...

International debt inspectors believe they have found another €15bn (£12.5bn) black hole in Greece’s public finances caused by the deepening recession, delivering the crippled nation another devastating blow. With pressure growing over talks with private investors about the terms of a €100bn debt write-off, officials calculated that to bring the country’s debts to a sustainable level at 120pc of GDP the international community would need to find an extra €15bn, raising the prospect of a Greek default. Sources told news organisations in Brussels that weak growth will make it even more difficult for Greece to resolve its debt problem, leaving...

It is disgusting to see UK Prime Minister David Cameron all but throw away the victory he achieved when he vetoed the Merkozy treaty. Please consider these sniveling, apologetic snips from the New York Times article Cameron Says His Veto on Europe Treaty Protects Britain Mr. Cameron, a Conservative, seemed at pains to offer soothing words to those afraid that he had so alienated his European allies that Britain was bound to leave the European Union altogether. “Britain remains a full member of the E.U., and the events of the last week do nothing to change that,” Mr. Cameron said....

DAVID Cameron has blasted the bully-boys of Europe with a sensational Winston Churchill-style "Up Yours". The PM vetoed a new treaty and kept Britain out of a dodgy deal to save the euro. But his bulldog spirit left the nation facing an unknown future and risking an EU backlash. The PM last night defended his historic veto of an EU deal intended to save the euro — despite infuriating pro-Europeans. Jubilant Tory MPs hailed his decision as a massive step towards Britain's EXIT from the European Union. His stand in Brussels was the first time a British Prime Minister has...